Ever wonder how Wildstar would be doing if it was more realistic, and wasn't a cartoon? If it was more mature and serious, with less humor?
People were looking for another alternative from WoW's artstyle, and yet they mimic it. Go figure.
I am just guessing here, but I would imagine those players that consider themselves hardcore are more likely to enjoy a more serious, blood and guts art style. I imagine players who would consider themselves casual would be more accepting of a very cartoony art style.
I always wondered why Carbine chose the art-style they did for a self-professed hardcore (read huge timesinks) game.
As for my opinion, I quite liked the artstyle; what I did not like was the constant flashing text, the unasked for time trials, the over-use of telegraphing drawing your eyes away from anything interesting and the general 'Look at me! Look at me!' neediness of it all. It just started to grate with me very quickly.
Here's the thing though. Wildstar is not hardcore. It's aimed at the vanilla WoW raiding folks, which was never hardcore. Vanilla WoW was the most casual MMO on the market when it launched. The WoW raiding formula has always been incredibly flawed, and catering to that audience is foolish.
Hoestly most of those on the forums who complain are on PVP servers, the game is tough enough without some prick pking you while trying to fight a bunch of mobs. The pve server im on is full of people, and it still says low pop. The Devs have allready mentioend that the servers can hold more then a typical server and that was thanks to all the morons in beta QQing about the 3 minute wait time...3 FREAKING MINUTES. Most was it as WoW 2.0 went in and found out they need to work for everything thus hated it. I walked in with low expectations and its not a bad game, reminds me of the days when things were not handed to you on a silver platter with a damn lollipop. But honestly in no way is it stuggleing. Warcraft had a HUGE fan base even before World of warcraft. and when they released WoW that same fanbase joined. Wildstar had no fan base, no RTS game to help build the name. It is amazing how many gamers blow smoke out their rear because they are to lazy to learn the facts of the game they want to hate, and i think most are like that because deep down they know if they learned about it they could not hate it.
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Ever wonder how Wildstar would be doing if it was more realistic, and wasn't a cartoon? If it was more mature and serious, with less humor?
People were looking for another alternative from WoW's artstyle, and yet they mimic it. Go figure.
I am just guessing here, but I would imagine those players that consider themselves hardcore are more likely to enjoy a more serious, blood and guts art style. I imagine players who would consider themselves casual would be more accepting of a very cartoony art style.
I always wondered why Carbine chose the art-style they did for a self-professed hardcore (read huge timesinks) game.
As for my opinion, I quite liked the artstyle; what I did not like was the constant flashing text, the unasked for time trials, the over-use of telegraphing drawing your eyes away from anything interesting and the general 'Look at me! Look at me!' neediness of it all. It just started to grate with me very quickly.
It would do better with non-cartoony / non-kiddie style ALTHROUGH it would still fail as Wildstar problems are plenty and are fixed in most fundamental concepts and problems that plague MMORPG genre.
Fixing one Wildstar problem would not avert overall outcome. Population drop may have been a little less sharp, but that's it. It would still fall quite quickly.
One more thing about 'what if realistic serious graphics' - additional problem for Wildstar would be that realitic graphics are more expensive to make. Cartoony graphics like in Wildstar are cheap. So going realitic would put additional pressure on financial results and could easily eat up any additional revenue from 'doing a bit better'.
People who decided to buy the game have already come to terms with the art style and either like it or have no real aversion to them. That is not the reason for the decline. If that is the reason WoW would not be so popular.
It's other factors for me it was the action combat and constant moving it was really bad after awhile. I left and I will not go back unless they change the action combat which they never will. FFXIV ARR is a game I love and am back there again. Also SWTOR. Tried WoW but no one runs dungeons properly there anymore.
Ever wonder how Wildstar would be doing if it was more realistic, and wasn't a cartoon? If it was more mature and serious, with less humor?
People were looking for another alternative from WoW's artstyle, and yet they mimic it. Go figure.
I am just guessing here, but I would imagine those players that consider themselves hardcore are more likely to enjoy a more serious, blood and guts art style. I imagine players who would consider themselves casual would be more accepting of a very cartoony art style.
I always wondered why Carbine chose the art-style they did for a self-professed hardcore (read huge timesinks) game.
As for my opinion, I quite liked the artstyle; what I did not like was the constant flashing text, the unasked for time trials, the over-use of telegraphing drawing your eyes away from anything interesting and the general 'Look at me! Look at me!' neediness of it all. It just started to grate with me very quickly.
It would do better with non-cartoony / non-kiddie style ALTHROUGH it would still fail as Wildstar problems are plenty and are fixed in most fundamental concepts and problems that plague MMORPG genre.
Fixing one Wildstar problem would not avert overall outcome. Population drop may have been a little less sharp, but that's it. It would still fall quite quickly.
One more thing about 'what if realistic serious graphics' - additional problem for Wildstar would be that realitic graphics are more expensive to make. Cartoony graphics like in Wildstar are cheap. So going realitic would put additional pressure on financial results and could easily eat up any additional revenue from 'doing a bit better'.
Remember this game took 9 years to develop. 9 years....
Having played it it feels like a 2 year development game, but it took 9....
I wonder what the hell they were doing for those 9 years.
Players that get attuned join guilds that are already attuned so they can raid immediately, leaving the rest of their old guildmates stuck.
There is no reward for helping others attune - so this creates the disparity between the haves (attuned) and have nots (everyone else).
So lots of players that reach 50 and realize that they are essentially stuck without guilds help, quit.
That's the core problem - there is no easy fix as nerfing attunment will piss off the hardcore elite which is who the raiders are in WS.
but you provided an answer already: reward attuned players for helping unattuned players gear up.
somehow make it worth their while to put in some small effort to help others attune. i think that's a great solution, for a lot of games really.
Instead of rewarding players already attuned why not instead give new players "guest attunement", allow them access but restrict the loot table for guests, however once the dungeon is finished your new player is attuned and able to gain full access to the full loot table.
It's one work around, EQ1 had to look at their own flagging system when guilds found it less rewarding to redo old content to help new members catch them up, so they allowed players to gain flagging for content through other means, that did not involve forcing the entire guild to repeat old lower tiered content that they really did not want to do again.
Also "Pissing off" the raiding elite isn't an issue when it's accounting for a miniscule player base, take care of the majority first then take another look at how to reward your hardcore players without shutting off content to casual players.
People who decided to buy the game have already come to terms with the art style and either like it or have no real aversion to them. That is not the reason for the decline. If that is the reason WoW would not be so popular.
It's other factors for me it was the action combat and constant moving it was really bad after awhile. I left and I will not go back unless they change the action combat which they never will. FFXIV ARR is a game I love and am back there again. Also SWTOR. Tried WoW but no one runs dungeons properly there anymore.
it has a number of problems and the art style certainly is one of them since many many people complained about this very thing. I bought the game and tried to enjoy it, got to 30 but when i moved from the white zone to the grey zone and got hit with the next 'gtfo' when i levelled I realised things were not really going to get better. The action was fine for me. I understand the issues with end game but that is recoverable potentially - they will be forced by customer demand to gradually evolve the end game systems to sustain the raiding and reach a balance between unforgiving raiding and the mess that is wow.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Any game where you stare at the floor looking for red and green shapes instead of looking at the graphics, no matter how cartoony, is boring and a huge waste of money.
The game is a cookie cutter mmo with a longer, gated grind added. Tedious, boring and repetitive. That's why you have been nodding off while playing, lately.
It's silly to cut your own throat to exclude a larger player (read payer) base so you can pretend you are "Hardcore."
As for "Hard," how hard can it be, it tells you when to dodge.
And if anyone believed the hype, well, all I can say is, "Stop being a sheep. If you act like a sheep then don't bleat when you waste your money."
As for that, stop wasting your money on a "new" mmo and just keep playing WoW, we both know you're just going back to it anyway. Not wasting cash takes the sting out another failed WoW raid if you can go out, with said extra cash, and buy a 40oz bottle of Patron Silver.
In conclusion, we all were in WS beta, if you didn't see the cracks in it, then maybe you need to take a break from MMOs. Get a new outlook. May I suggest your local liquor store. Patron Silver makes an amazing margarita.
(I totally don't have any shares in the Patron Spirits Company.)
Originally posted by lizardbones Has anyone yet given any concrete information as to why they consider WildStar to be struggling?
Concrete information? Opinions are all subjective.
As to concrete information that WS is struggling: -
Look at the server populations.
Look at the NCSoft quarterly financial report which shows the game is a long long way off earning back in revenue the most conservative estimates of the development costs.
Look at the President stepping down (partly due to family/ health reasons).
I do not have access to their accounts, but do you really need more of an indication that a game is struggling than the above?
Struggling relative to what? That's what I am asking. Where are the expectations coming from? What were NCSoft's expectations? What were Carbine's expectations? Without that, this conversation has very little meaning. It does not matter if random analysts expected more and got less if the developer expected less and got more.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Originally posted by lizardbones Struggling relative to what? That's what I am asking. Where are the expectations coming from? What were NCSoft's expectations? What were Carbine's expectations? Without that, this conversation has very little meaning. It does not matter if random analysts expected more and got less if the developer expected less and got more.
Did you read my post. Their expectations are to make back the development cost in revenue and then make a profit on top of that.
Go and read the NCSoft quarterly report. They are a long way of making the most conservative estimate of the development cost back.
Seriously, they have the same expectations any business does....
Ever wonder how Wildstar would be doing if it was more realistic, and wasn't a cartoon? If it was more mature and serious, with less humor?
People were looking for another alternative from WoW's artstyle, and yet they mimic it. Go figure.
I am just guessing here, but I would imagine those players that consider themselves hardcore are more likely to enjoy a more serious, blood and guts art style. I imagine players who would consider themselves casual would be more accepting of a very cartoony art style.
I always wondered why Carbine chose the art-style they did for a self-professed hardcore (read huge timesinks) game.
As for my opinion, I quite liked the artstyle; what I did not like was the constant flashing text, the unasked for time trials, the over-use of telegraphing drawing your eyes away from anything interesting and the general 'Look at me! Look at me!' neediness of it all. It just started to grate with me very quickly.
It would do better with non-cartoony / non-kiddie style ALTHROUGH it would still fail as Wildstar problems are plenty and are fixed in most fundamental concepts and problems that plague MMORPG genre.
Fixing one Wildstar problem would not avert overall outcome. Population drop may have been a little less sharp, but that's it. It would still fall quite quickly.
One more thing about 'what if realistic serious graphics' - additional problem for Wildstar would be that realitic graphics are more expensive to make. Cartoony graphics like in Wildstar are cheap. So going realitic would put additional pressure on financial results and could easily eat up any additional revenue from 'doing a bit better'.
Remember this game took 9 years to develop. 9 years....
Having played it it feels like a 2 year development game, but it took 9....
I wonder what the hell they were doing for those 9 years.
Who knows what bumps this Project had? Some projects have very bumpy road, with i.e. multiple cancelations or underfinancing for long peroids of time along the way. Layoffs, conceptual changes, you name it - plenty of reasons why game development took a lot of time and produce bad results in the end.
Warhammer Online or from single player games - Duke Nukem Forever anyone?
I've personally would not be surprised if i.e. Wildstar was originally made / targetted as 'kids mmorpg'. But kids MMO / MMORPGs are not doing okay with mulitple titles getting shut down like Clone Wars Adventures, Free Realms, Pirates of the Caribbean Online, Toontown Online, LEGO Universe and more. Barely anyone is making new ones too.
So I think NCSoft and Carbine saw that 'kids targetted' mmorpgs have bad perpective and instead of scrapping the project completly they've changed Wildstar into 'MMORPG for general playerbase'.
That is why you have lore, humor, graphics, cinematics, etc from clearly kid-focused MMOPRG (WoW in comparision is dark mature world), huge telegraph use coupled with raider & dungeon foucs.
Anyway it really does not matter imho. Almost every MMORPG will have a very hard time until they fix problems that are plaguing MMORPG genre since beggining. (thing is many of them are unfixable atm).
The reason why WS is struggling is the devs aren't listening. Otherwise they would have taken note of what about everyone and their moms predicted ages ago. Instead they were too busy padding themselves on the back about how hardcore this game is.
What we see is the exact outcome of what everyone has said would happen. Carbine released a game that was supposed to succeed on various mechanics which have altogether proven to be design-mistakes years ago. They doomed their own product.
I think there is much confusion, let me clear some things up...
1st: This is a cartoon, not a game, the pure overuse of cartoony graphics and stupid humor, the whole thing is one big funny joke.
2nd: the devs dont care, thats why they went sub based, to con you out of your money pure and simple. When they put it all together , they're #1 agenda is "How much money can we make?"
3rd: actually kindof the same as the first, but cannot stress it enough.. this is a cartoon.. not a game..
4th: there is nothing hardcore about this game. its a family friendly playable cartoon for the whole family to enjoy.. correct me if im wrong but its not even possible to loot other players..
I think there is much confusion, let me clear some things up...
1st: This is a cartoon, not a game, the pure overuse of cartoony graphics and stupid humor, the whole thing is one big funny joke.
2nd: the devs dont care, thats why they went sub based, to con you out of your money pure and simple. When they put it all together , they're #1 agenda is "How much money can we make?"
3rd: actually kindof the same as the first, but cannot stress it enough.. this is a cartoon.. not a game..
4th: there is nothing hardcore about this game. its a family friendly playable cartoon for the whole family to enjoy.. correct me if im wrong but its not even possible to loot other players..
I think the "claim to fame" that Wildstar tried to make was "hardcore PvE", as in the big 40 man raid instances.
I don't remember ever reading anything about Wildstar claiming to be a hardcore PvP MMORPG.
I think the devs put their all into this game and it shows. It tried to mix some fresh ideas into an old MMORPG model, which is something I've been waiting for a very long time. It just didn't work out well. That's the thing with video games. They're a high stakes endeavor.
I'd fight tooth and nail against anyone who says this game was a failure. It was a success in a lot of ways, and I'd love to see these devs get a few kickstarter projects to show the triple A world that people actually appreciate game developers who dare to dream big and different.
I think the devs put their all into this game and it shows. It tried to mix some fresh ideas into an old MMORPG model, which is something I've been waiting for a very long time. It just didn't work out well. That's the thing with video games. They're a high stakes endeavor.
I'd fight tooth and nail against anyone who says this game was a failure. It was a success in a lot of ways, and I'd love to see these devs get a few kickstarter projects to show the triple A world that people actually appreciate game developers who dare to dream big and different.
In the end it is the financial success that matters. No other kind of success pays the bills.
Personally, I think it's a 100% failure in the artistic direction. I tried to play this title, I really did . There's cartoony art styles & then there is this. This was beyond cartoony. It was simply unplayable looking the way it did.
I spent a good deal of time attempting to create a character. I tried every race & faction & was left unsatisfied in the end.
Nothing worse than settling.
And that's exactly what the players of this game are doing, imho. Settling.
I think everyone is overanalyzing, why WS is not successful. It is very simple...it just is not a good game in almost every aspect. This is a poorly conceived and presented game.
Comments
I am just guessing here, but I would imagine those players that consider themselves hardcore are more likely to enjoy a more serious, blood and guts art style. I imagine players who would consider themselves casual would be more accepting of a very cartoony art style.
I always wondered why Carbine chose the art-style they did for a self-professed hardcore (read huge timesinks) game.
As for my opinion, I quite liked the artstyle; what I did not like was the constant flashing text, the unasked for time trials, the over-use of telegraphing drawing your eyes away from anything interesting and the general 'Look at me! Look at me!' neediness of it all. It just started to grate with me very quickly.
free 7 day sub and unlocks for swtor new accounts and 90+ day inactive subs click here to get it!
Click here for trove referral, bonuses to both!
It would do better with non-cartoony / non-kiddie style ALTHROUGH it would still fail as Wildstar problems are plenty and are fixed in most fundamental concepts and problems that plague MMORPG genre.
Fixing one Wildstar problem would not avert overall outcome. Population drop may have been a little less sharp, but that's it. It would still fall quite quickly.
One more thing about 'what if realistic serious graphics' - additional problem for Wildstar would be that realitic graphics are more expensive to make. Cartoony graphics like in Wildstar are cheap. So going realitic would put additional pressure on financial results and could easily eat up any additional revenue from 'doing a bit better'.
People who decided to buy the game have already come to terms with the art style and either like it or have no real aversion to them. That is not the reason for the decline. If that is the reason WoW would not be so popular.
It's other factors for me it was the action combat and constant moving it was really bad after awhile. I left and I will not go back unless they change the action combat which they never will. FFXIV ARR is a game I love and am back there again. Also SWTOR. Tried WoW but no one runs dungeons properly there anymore.
Remember this game took 9 years to develop. 9 years....
Having played it it feels like a 2 year development game, but it took 9....
I wonder what the hell they were doing for those 9 years.
Instead of rewarding players already attuned why not instead give new players "guest attunement", allow them access but restrict the loot table for guests, however once the dungeon is finished your new player is attuned and able to gain full access to the full loot table.
It's one work around, EQ1 had to look at their own flagging system when guilds found it less rewarding to redo old content to help new members catch them up, so they allowed players to gain flagging for content through other means, that did not involve forcing the entire guild to repeat old lower tiered content that they really did not want to do again.
Also "Pissing off" the raiding elite isn't an issue when it's accounting for a miniscule player base, take care of the majority first then take another look at how to reward your hardcore players without shutting off content to casual players.
it has a number of problems and the art style certainly is one of them since many many people complained about this very thing. I bought the game and tried to enjoy it, got to 30 but when i moved from the white zone to the grey zone and got hit with the next 'gtfo' when i levelled I realised things were not really going to get better. The action was fine for me. I understand the issues with end game but that is recoverable potentially - they will be forced by customer demand to gradually evolve the end game systems to sustain the raiding and reach a balance between unforgiving raiding and the mess that is wow.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
Is leveling part are too fast and lack of things to do at the end ? like most MMORPGs made after WOW.
I wasn't play WS but it sound like the end game contents are only raid .
Play WOW ?
Surely not, then they would have learned how to make a successful mmo.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Bahh.
Any game where you stare at the floor looking for red and green shapes instead of looking at the graphics, no matter how cartoony, is boring and a huge waste of money.
The game is a cookie cutter mmo with a longer, gated grind added. Tedious, boring and repetitive. That's why you have been nodding off while playing, lately.
It's silly to cut your own throat to exclude a larger player (read payer) base so you can pretend you are "Hardcore."
As for "Hard," how hard can it be, it tells you when to dodge.
And if anyone believed the hype, well, all I can say is, "Stop being a sheep. If you act like a sheep then don't bleat when you waste your money."
As for that, stop wasting your money on a "new" mmo and just keep playing WoW, we both know you're just going back to it anyway. Not wasting cash takes the sting out another failed WoW raid if you can go out, with said extra cash, and buy a 40oz bottle of Patron Silver.
In conclusion, we all were in WS beta, if you didn't see the cracks in it, then maybe you need to take a break from MMOs. Get a new outlook. May I suggest your local liquor store. Patron Silver makes an amazing margarita.
(I totally don't have any shares in the Patron Spirits Company.)
Concrete information? Opinions are all subjective.
As to concrete information that WS is struggling: -
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Did you read my post. Their expectations are to make back the development cost in revenue and then make a profit on top of that.
Go and read the NCSoft quarterly report. They are a long way of making the most conservative estimate of the development cost back.
Seriously, they have the same expectations any business does....
Who knows what bumps this Project had? Some projects have very bumpy road, with i.e. multiple cancelations or underfinancing for long peroids of time along the way. Layoffs, conceptual changes, you name it - plenty of reasons why game development took a lot of time and produce bad results in the end.
Warhammer Online or from single player games - Duke Nukem Forever anyone?
I've personally would not be surprised if i.e. Wildstar was originally made / targetted as 'kids mmorpg'. But kids MMO / MMORPGs are not doing okay with mulitple titles getting shut down like Clone Wars Adventures, Free Realms, Pirates of the Caribbean Online, Toontown Online, LEGO Universe and more. Barely anyone is making new ones too.
So I think NCSoft and Carbine saw that 'kids targetted' mmorpgs have bad perpective and instead of scrapping the project completly they've changed Wildstar into 'MMORPG for general playerbase'.
That is why you have lore, humor, graphics, cinematics, etc from clearly kid-focused MMOPRG (WoW in comparision is dark mature world), huge telegraph use coupled with raider & dungeon foucs.
Anyway it really does not matter imho. Almost every MMORPG will have a very hard time until they fix problems that are plaguing MMORPG genre since beggining. (thing is many of them are unfixable atm).
The reason why WS is struggling is the devs aren't listening. Otherwise they would have taken note of what about everyone and their moms predicted ages ago. Instead they were too busy padding themselves on the back about how hardcore this game is.
What we see is the exact outcome of what everyone has said would happen. Carbine released a game that was supposed to succeed on various mechanics which have altogether proven to be design-mistakes years ago. They doomed their own product.
I think there is much confusion, let me clear some things up...
1st: This is a cartoon, not a game, the pure overuse of cartoony graphics and stupid humor, the whole thing is one big funny joke.
2nd: the devs dont care, thats why they went sub based, to con you out of your money pure and simple. When they put it all together , they're #1 agenda is "How much money can we make?"
3rd: actually kindof the same as the first, but cannot stress it enough.. this is a cartoon.. not a game..
4th: there is nothing hardcore about this game. its a family friendly playable cartoon for the whole family to enjoy.. correct me if im wrong but its not even possible to loot other players..
I think the "claim to fame" that Wildstar tried to make was "hardcore PvE", as in the big 40 man raid instances.
I don't remember ever reading anything about Wildstar claiming to be a hardcore PvP MMORPG.
I think their plan was to get the hardcore crowd on board and the casuals will follow.
Unfortunately most of their design decisions were bad and the plan completely backfired.
I think the devs put their all into this game and it shows. It tried to mix some fresh ideas into an old MMORPG model, which is something I've been waiting for a very long time. It just didn't work out well. That's the thing with video games. They're a high stakes endeavor.
I'd fight tooth and nail against anyone who says this game was a failure. It was a success in a lot of ways, and I'd love to see these devs get a few kickstarter projects to show the triple A world that people actually appreciate game developers who dare to dream big and different.
In the end it is the financial success that matters. No other kind of success pays the bills.
Personally, I think it's a 100% failure in the artistic direction. I tried to play this title, I really did . There's cartoony art styles & then there is this. This was beyond cartoony. It was simply unplayable looking the way it did.
I spent a good deal of time attempting to create a character. I tried every race & faction & was left unsatisfied in the end.
Nothing worse than settling.
And that's exactly what the players of this game are doing, imho. Settling.